Recently, one newspaper celebrated Prince Philip’s forthcoming 90th birthday with a collection of his quotes under the title ‘Ninety gaffes in ninety years’.
They are, according to their compiler, ‘the soundbites that could only have come from one man’.
As one might have expected, these ‘gaffes’ tended towards the tetchy and the outspoken.
‘Get me a beer. I don’t care what kind it is, just get me a beer!’ This was apparenty what Prince Philip said to the Italian PM at an official dinner in Rome in 2000.
But could such a remark really ‘only have come from one man’? While I was perusing the lengthy list of his ‘gaffes’, I kept hearing another, strikingly similar, voice in my ears. But whose?
‘You must be out of your minds.’ This was what Prince Philip said to Solomon Islanders in 1982 on being told that their population growth was 5 per cent a year.
‘Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!’ was what he said at a dinner party in 2004.
And so the quotes went on, a combustible mix of irritation and entitlement. They kept reminding me of someone else, someone equally irascible.
And then it struck me: Liam Gallagher!
A couple of months ago, to mark the occasion of his new album, the New Musical Express printed a list of ‘Liam Gallagher’s 60 Funniest Quotes’.
Surprising though it may seem, the two lists show Prince Philip and Liam Gallagher as virtually interchangeable.
Half a century divides the former lead singer of Oasis from the Queen’s consort, and their backgrounds, too, are rather different, but the remarkable similarities in their concerns and reactions somehow transcend everything.
For instance, both men exhibit a clear tendency to insult those who offer them hospitality.
On a trip to Canada in 1976, Prince Philip said: ‘We don’t come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves.’
In 2004, when asked by NME about the spirit of Glastonbury, Gallagher replied: ‘I f***ing hate Glastonbury, mate. I’m only here for the money.’
And when asked his opinion of Beijing during the 1986 royal tour of China, Prince Philip replied with one word: ‘Ghastly.’
It is unfair that the older man’s remarks are classified as gaffes while the younger man’s are celebrated as witticisms, as they are, by and large, interchangeable.
Were this a blind tasting, it would take an expert to tell the wines — or whines — apart.
What would happen if, by some bizarre bureaucratic mix-up, Queen Elizabeth II were to find herself accompanied on a state visit by Liam Gallagher?
Or, to put it another way, how would Gallagher’s new band Beady Eye react were they to look up to find Prince Philip centre-stage, ill-shaven in a Parka, bawling out the vocals?
No doubt eyebrows would be raised, and some eagle-eyed members of the pop and royal cognoscenti might spot the odd difference. But would the rest of us notice?
As I continued to read the two lists, I was struck more and more by how close they were. ‘I wish he’d turn the microphone off!’ said Prince Philip of Elton John at the Royal Variety Show in 2001.
A few months later, Gallagher made a similar complaint about a pop rival. ‘I’d like to hang Robbie Williams onstage. What’s he done to me . . ? Nothing. He’s just somebody I’d like to hang.’
It is almost as though Gallagher — robust, no-nonsense, forthright, manly — was the son Prince Philip never quite had.
Both men despise the airy-fairy and the sissy. ‘Posh boys can’t take drugs, man, they’re lightweights,’ Gallagher scornfully remarked of fellow rock stars Pete Doherty and Tom Chaplin in 2006.
‘They have one little line, and they’re in rehab.’
In 1995, Prince Philip said much the same of soldiers who sought stress counselling.
‘We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking: “Are you all right — are you sure you don’t have a ghastly problem?” You just got on with it!’
Both men are much given to higgledy-piggledy pronouncements on social issues, ending up attacking those they intend to defend.
‘A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone’s working too much. Now that everybody’s got more leisure time they are complaining they are unemployed,’ said Prince Philip in 1981.
Nearly 30 years on, Gallagher had this to say of the student riots: ‘I loved it, man. I’m into the violent side of it. I thought it made for great TV. I still think they should get a f***ing job, though.’
So they go on, the Prince morphing steadily into the rock star, so that, in the end, we are left with a composite Prince Liam figure, forever sounding off about this, that and the other, ready for classification as either a gaffe or a witticism, depending on your point of view.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
